Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Bush/Cheney and blue denotes those won by Gore/Lieberman. One of D.C.'s three electors abstained from casting a vote for president or vice president. Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state and the District of Columbia.

Both major-party candidates focused primarily on domestic issues, such as the budget, tax relief, and reforms for federal social insurance programs, although foreign policy was not ignored. Due to President Bill Clinton's sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky and subsequent impeachment, Gore avoided campaigning with Clinton. Republicans denounced Clinton's indiscretions, while Gore criticized Bush's lack of experience. On election night, it was unclear who had won, with the electoral votes of the state of Florida still undecided. The returns showed that Bush had won Florida by such a close margin that state law required a recount. A month-long series of legal battles led to the highly controversial 5–4 Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount.

With the end of the recount, Bush won Florida by a margin of 0.009%, or 537 votes. The Florida recount and subsequent litigation resulted in major post-election controversy, and various people and organizations have speculated about who would have won the election in various scenarios.[6][7] Ultimately, Bush won 271 electoral votes, one more than a majority, despite Gore receiving 543,895 more votes (a margin of 0.51% of all votes cast).[8] Bush flipped 11 states that went Democratic in the 1996 election: Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia. Some of the Southern and Midwestern states flipped in this election have since become safe states in presidential elections for the Republican Party.

Background

Article Two of the United States Constitution provides that the President and Vice President of the United States must be natural-born citizens of the United States, at least 35 years old, and a resident of the United States for a period of at least 14 years. Candidates for the presidency typically seek the nomination of one of the political parties, in which case each party devises a method (such as a primary election) to choose the candidate the party deems best suited to run for the position. Traditionally, the primary elections are indirect elections where voters cast ballots for a slate of party delegates pledged to a particular candidate. The party's delegates then officially nominate a candidate to run on the party's behalf. The general election in November is also an indirect election, where voters cast ballots for a slate of members of the Electoral College; these electors in turn directly elect the president and vice president.

Primaries

Bush became the early front-runner, acquiring unprecedented funding and a broad base of leadership support based on his governorship of Texas and the Bush family's name recognition and connections. Former cabinet member George Shultz played an important early role in securing establishment Republican support for Bush. In April 1998, he invited Bush to discuss policy issues with experts including Michael Boskin, John Taylor, and Condoleezza Rice. The group, which was "looking for a candidate for 2000 with good political instincts, someone they could work with", was impressed, and Shultz encouraged him to enter the race.[9]

On January 24, Bush won the Iowa caucus with 41% of the vote. Forbes came in second with 30% of the vote. Keyes received 14%, Bauer 9%, McCain 5%, and Hatch 1%. Hatch dropped out. The national media portrayed Bush as the establishment candidate. McCain, with the support of many moderate Republicans and Independents, portrayed himself as a crusading insurgent who focused on campaign reform.

On February 1, McCain won a 49–30% victory over Bush in the New Hampshire primary. Bauer dropped out. After coming in third in Delaware, Forbes dropped out, leaving three candidates. In the South Carolina primary, Bush soundly defeated McCain. Some McCain supporters accused the Bush campaign of mudslinging and dirty tricks, such as push polling that implied that McCain's adopted Bangladeshi-born daughter was an African-American child he fathered out of wedlock.[10] McCain's loss in South Carolina damaged his campaign, but he won both Michigan and his home state of Arizona on February 22.

(The primary election that year also affected the South Carolina State House, when a controversy about the Confederate flag flying over the capitol dome prompted the state legislature to move the flag to a less prominent position at a Civil War memorial on the capitol grounds. Most GOP candidates said the issue should be left to South Carolina voters, but McCain later recanted and said the flag should be removed.[11])

On February 24, McCain criticized Bush for accepting the endorsement of Bob Jones University despite its policy banning interracial dating. On February 28, McCain also referred to Jerry Falwell and televangelist Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance", a term he distanced himself from during his 2008 bid. He lost Virginia to Bush on February 29. On Super Tuesday, March 7, Bush won New York, Ohio, Georgia, Missouri, California, Maryland, and Maine. McCain won Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, but dropped out of the race. McCain became the Republican presidential nominee 8 years later, but lost the general election to Barack Obama. On March 10, Keyes got 21% of the vote in Utah. Bush took the majority of the remaining contests and won the Republican nomination on March 14, winning his home state of Texas and his brother Jeb's home state of Florida, among others. At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Bush accepted the nomination.

Bush asked former Secretary of DefenseDick Cheney to head up a team to help select a running mate for him, but ultimately chose Cheney himself as the vice presidential nominee. While the U.S. Constitution does not specifically disallow a president and a vice president from the same state, it does prohibit electors from casting both of his or her votes for persons from his or her own state. Accordingly, Cheney—who had been a resident of Texas for nearly 10 years—changed his voting registration back to Wyoming. Had Cheney not done this, either he or Bush would have forfeited his electoral votes from Texas.

Running an insurgency campaign, Bradley positioned himself as the alternative to Gore, who was a founding member of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. While former basketball star Michael Jordan campaigned for him in the early primary states, Bradley announced his intention to campaign "in a different way" by conducting a positive campaign of "big ideas". His campaign's focus was a plan to spend the record-breaking budget surplus on a variety of social welfare programs to help the poor and the middle class, along with campaign finance reform and gun control.

Gore easily defeated Bradley in the primaries, largely because of support from the Democratic Party establishment and Bradley's poor showing in the Iowa caucus, where Gore successfully painted Bradley as aloof and indifferent to the plight of farmers. The closest Bradley came to a victory was his 50–46 loss to Gore in the New Hampshire primary. On March 14, Gore clinched the Democratic nomination.

Natural Law Party nomination

The Natural Law Party held its national convention in Arlington, Virginia, on August 31–September 2, unanimously nominating a ticket of Hagelin/Goldhaber without a roll-call vote.[23] The party was on 38 of the 51 ballots nationally.[22]

General election campaign

Although the campaign focused mainly on domestic issues, such as the projected budget surplus, proposed reforms of Social Security and Medicare, health care, and competing plans for tax relief, foreign policy was often an issue.

Bush criticized Clinton administration policies in Somalia, where 18 Americans died in 1993 trying to sort out warring factions, and in the Balkans, where United States peacekeeping troops perform a variety of functions. "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building", Bush said in the second presidential debate.[24] Bush also pledged to bridge partisan gaps, claiming the atmosphere in Washington stood in the way of progress on necessary reforms.[25] Gore, meanwhile, questioned Bush's fitness for the job, pointing to gaffes Bush made in interviews and speeches and suggesting he lacked the necessary experience to be president.

Bill Clinton's impeachment and the sex scandal that led up to it cast a shadow on the campaign. Republicans strongly denounced the Clinton scandals, and Bush made a promise to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House a centerpiece of his campaign. Gore studiously avoided the Clinton scandals, as did Lieberman, even though Lieberman had been the first Democratic senator to denounce Clinton's misbehavior. Some observers theorized that Gore chose Lieberman in an attempt to separate himself from Clinton's past misdeeds and help blunt the GOP's attempts to link him to his boss.[26] Others pointed to the passionate kiss Gore gave his wife during the Democratic Convention as a signal that despite the allegations against Clinton, Gore himself was a faithful husband.[27] Gore avoided appearing with Clinton, who was shunted to low-visibility appearances in areas where he was popular. Experts have argued that this could have cost Gore votes from some of Clinton's core supporters.[28][29]

Ralph Nader was the most successful of the third-party candidates. His campaign was marked by a traveling tour of large "super-rallies" held in sports arenas like Madison Square Garden, with retired talk show hostPhil Donahue as master of ceremonies.[30] After initially ignoring Nader, the Gore campaign made a pitch to potential Nader supporters in the campaign's final weeks,[31] downplaying his differences with Nader on the issues and arguing that Gore's ideas were more similar to Nader's than Bush's were and that Gore had a better chance of winning than Nader.[32] On the other side, the Republican Leadership Council ran pro-Nader ads in a few states in an effort to split the liberal vote.[33] Nader said his campaign's objective was to pass the 5-percent threshold so his Green Party would be eligible for matching funds in future races.[34]

After the 1996 presidential election, the Commission on Presidential Debates set new candidate selection criteria.[41] The new criteria required third-party candidates to poll at least 15% of the vote in national polls in order to take part in the CPD-sponsored presidential debates.[41] Nader was blocked from attending a closed-circuit screening of the first debate despite having a ticket,[42] and barred from attending an interview near the site of the third debate (Washington University in St. Louis) despite having a "perimeter pass".[43] Nader later sued the CPD for its role in the former incident. A settlement was reached that included an apology to him.[44]

Notable expressions and phrases

Lockbox/Rainy Day fund: Gore's description of what he would do with the federal budget surplus.

Fuzzy math: a term used by Bush to dismiss the figures used by Gore. Others later turned the term against Bush.[45][46]

Al Gore invented the Internet: an interpretation of Gore's having said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet", meaning that he was on the committee that funded the research leading to the Internet's formation.

As the night wore on, the returns in a handful of small-to-medium-sized states, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Oregon and New Mexico (Gore by 355 votes) were extremely close, but the election came down to Florida. As the final national results were tallied the following morning, Bush had clearly won 246 electoral votes and Gore 250, with 270 needed to win. Two smaller states—Wisconsin (11 electoral votes) and Oregon (7)—were still too close to call, but Florida's 25 electoral votes would be decisive regardless of their results. The election's outcome was not known for more than a month after voting ended because of the time required to count and recount Florida's ballots.

Florida recount

Between 7:50p.m. and 8:00p.m. EST on election day, just before the polls closed in the largely Republican Florida panhandle, which is in the Central time zone, all major television news networks (CNN, NBC, FOX, CBS, and ABC) declared that Gore had won Florida. They based this prediction substantially on exit polls. But in the actual vote tally Bush began to take a wide lead early in Florida, and by 10 p.m. EST the networks had retracted their predictions and placed Florida back in the "undecided" column. At approximately 2:30a.m., with 85% of the vote counted in Florida and Bush leading Gore by more than 100,000 votes, the networks declared that Bush had carried Florida and therefore been elected president. But most of the remaining votes to be counted in Florida were in three heavily Democratic counties—Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach—and as their votes were reported Gore began to gain on Bush. By 4:30a.m., after all votes were counted, Gore had narrowed Bush's margin to under 2,000 votes, and the networks retracted their declarations that Bush had won Florida and the presidency. Gore, who had privately conceded the election to Bush, withdrew his concession. The final result in Florida was slim enough to require a mandatory recount (by machine) under state law; Bush's lead dwindled to just over 300 votes when it was completed the day after the election. On November 8, Florida Division of Elections staff prepared a press release for Florida Secretary of StateKatherine Harris that said overseas ballots must be "postmarked or signed and dated" by Election Day. It was never released.[7]:16 A count of the overseas ballots later boosted Bush's margin to 930 votes. (According to a report by The New York Times, 680 of the accepted overseas ballots were received after the legal deadline, lacked required postmarks or a witness signature or address, or were unsigned or undated, cast after election day, from unregistered voters or voters not requesting ballots, or double-counted.[47])

Florida Supreme Court during the recount

Most of the post-electoral controversy revolved around Gore's request for hand recounts in four counties (Broward, Miami Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia), as provided under Florida state law. Harris, who also co-chaired Bush's Florida campaign, announced she would reject any revised totals from those counties if they were not turned in by 5p.m. on November 14, the statutory deadline for amended returns. The Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline to November 26, a decision later vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court. Miami-Dade eventually halted its recount and resubmitted its original total to the state canvassing board, while Palm Beach County failed to meet the extended deadline, turning in its completed recount results at 7p.m., which Harris rejected. On November 26, the state canvassing board certified Bush as the winner of Florida's electors by 537 votes. Gore formally contested the certified results. A state court decision overruling Gore was reversed by the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered a recount of over 70,000 ballots previously rejected as undervotes by machine counters. The U.S. Supreme Court halted that order the next day, with Justice Scalia issuing a concurring opinion that "the counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner" (Bush).[48]

On December 12, the Supreme Court ruled in a per curiam decision (asserted as a 7–2 vote) that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling requiring a statewide recount of ballots was unconstitutional on equal protection grounds, and in a 5–4 vote reversed and remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court for modification prior to the optional "safe harbor" deadline, which the Supreme Court argued that Florida court had said the state intended to meet. With only two hours remaining until the December 12 deadline, the Supreme Court's order effectively ended the recount, and the previously certified total held.

Even if the Supreme Court had decided differently in Bush v. Gore, the Florida Legislature had been meeting in Special Session since December 8 with the purpose of selecting of a slate of electors on December 12 should the dispute still be ongoing.[49][50] Had the recount gone forward, it would have awarded those electors to Bush, based on the state-certified vote, and Gore's likely last recourse would have been to contest the electors in the United States Congress. The electors would then have been rejected only if both GOP-controlled houses agreed to do so.[51]

National results

Though Gore came in second in the electoral vote, he received 547,398 more popular votes than Bush,[52] making him the first person since Grover Cleveland in 1888 to win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College.[53] Gore failed to win the popular vote in his home state, Tennessee, which both he and his father had represented in the Senate, making him the first major-party presidential candidate to have lost his home state since George McGovern lost South Dakota in 1972. Furthermore, Gore lost West Virginia, a state that had voted Republican only once in the previous six presidential elections,[54] and Bill Clinton's home state of Arkansas, which had voted twice before to elect Gore vice president. A victory in any of these three states (or any state that Bush won) would have given Gore enough electoral votes to win the presidency.

Bush-Cheney and Gore-Lieberman supporters protest

This is the first time since 1928 in which a non-incumbent Republican candidate won West Virginia.

The Electoral College results were the closest since 1876. Gore's 266 electoral votes is the highest for a losing nominee.

Bush was the first Republican in American history to win the presidency without winning Vermont or Illinois, the second Republican to win the presidency without winning California (James A. Garfield in 1880 was the first) or Pennsylvania (Richard Nixon in 1968 was the first), and the first winning Republican not to receive any electoral votes from California (Garfield received one vote in 1880). Bush also lost in Connecticut, the state of his birth. As of 2016, Bush is the last Republican nominee to win New Hampshire.

This marked the first time since Iowa entered the union in 1846 in which the state voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in four elections in a row (1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000), and the last time Iowa did not vote for the overall winner. There were two counties in the nation that had voted Republican in 1996 and voted Democratic in 2000: Charles County, Maryland and Orange County, Florida, both rapidly diversifying counties. The 2000 election was also the last time a Republican won a number of populous urban counties that have since turned into Democratic strongholds. These include Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (Charlotte); Marion County, Indiana (Indianapolis), Fairfax County, Virginia (DC suburbs), and Travis County, Texas (Austin). In 2016, the most recent presidential election, Republican Donald Trump lost Mecklenburg by 30%, Marion by 23%, Fairfax by 36%, and Travis by 38%. Conversely, as of 2017 Gore is the last Democrat to have won any counties at all in Oklahoma.[55]

Arizona results

★The Libertarian Party of Arizona had ballot access, but opted to supplant Browne with L. Neil Smith. Thus, in Arizona, Smith received 5,775 votes, constituting 0.38% of the Arizona vote. When adding Smith's 5,775 votes to Browne's 384,431 votes nationwide, that brings the total votes cast for president for the Libertarian Party in 2000 to 390,206, or 0.37% of the vote.

Maine and Nebraska district results

†Maine and Nebraska each allow for their electoral votes to be split between candidates. In both states, two electoral votes are awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote is awarded to the winner of each congressional district. The following table records the official presidential vote tallies for Maine and Nebraska's congressional districts.[57][58]

★Although the Libertarian Party had ballot access in all fifty United States plus D.C., Browne's name only appeared on the ballot in forty-nine United States plus D.C. The Libertarian Party of Arizona opted to place L. Neil Smith on the ballot in Browne's place. When adding Smith's 5,775 Arizona votes to Browne's 384,431 votes nationwide, that brings the total presidential votes cast for the Libertarian Party in 2000 to 390,206.

Aftermath

After Florida was decided and Gore conceded, Texas GovernorGeorge W. Bush became the president-elect and began forming his transition committee.[60] In a speech on December 13, in the Texas House of Representatives chamber,[61] Bush stated he was reaching across party lines to bridge a divided America, saying, "the President of the United States is the President of every single American, of every race, and every background."[62]

Subsequently, the joint session of Congress certified the electoral votes from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001. He would serve for the next eight years. Gore has not, as of 2018, considered another presidential run, endorsing Howard Dean's candidacy during the 2004 Democratic primary and remaining neutral in the Democratic primaries of 2008 and 2016.[64][citation needed]

The first independent recount of undervotes was conducted by the Miami Herald and USA Today. The commission found that under most scenarios for completion of the initiated recounts, Bush would have won the election; however, Gore would have won using the most generous standards for undervotes.[65]

Ultimately, a media consortium — comprising The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Tribune Co. (parent of the Los Angeles Times), Associated Press, CNN, The Palm Beach Post and the St. Petersburg Times[66]—hired NORC at the University of Chicago[67] to examine 175,010 ballots that were collected from the entire state, not just the disputed counties that were recounted; these ballots contained undervotes (ballots with no machine-detected choice made for president) and overvotes (ballots with more than one choice marked). Their goal was to determine the reliability and accuracy of the systems used for the voting process. Based on the NORC review, the media group concluded that if the disputes over all the ballots in question had been resolved by applying statewide any of five standards that would have met Florida's legal standard for recounts, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 60 to 171 votes. (Any analysis of NORC data requires, for each punch ballot, at least two of the three ballot reviewers' codes to agree or instead, for all three to agree.) For all undervotes and overvotes statewide, these five standards are:[7][68][69]

Prevailing standard – accepts at least one detached corner of a chad and all affirmative marks on optical scan ballots.

Two-corner standard – accepts at least two detached corners of a chad and all affirmative marks on optical scan ballots.

Most restrictive standard – accepts only so-called perfect ballots that machines somehow missed and did not count, or ballots with unambiguous expressions of voter intent.

Most inclusive standard – applies uniform criteria of "dimple or better" on punch marks and all affirmative marks on optical scan ballots.

Such a statewide review including all uncounted votes was a tangible possibility, as Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, whom the Florida Supreme Court had assigned to oversee the statewide recount, had scheduled a hearing for December 13 (mooted by the U.S. Supreme Court's final ruling on the 12th) to consider the question of including overvotes as well as undervotes. Subsequent statements by Judge Lewis and internal court documents support the likelihood of including overvotes in the recount.[70]Florida State University professor of public policy Lance deHaven-Smith observed that, even considering only undervotes, "under any of the five most reasonable interpretations of the Florida Supreme Court ruling, Gore does, in fact, more than make up the deficit".[7]Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's analysis of the NORC study and media coverage of it supports these interpretations and criticizes the coverage of the study by media outlets such as The New York Times and the other media consortium members.[66]

Further, according to sociologists Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza, the 2000 election might have gone to Gore if the disenfranchised population of Florida had voted. Florida law disenfranchises convicted felons, requiring individual applications to regain suffrage. In their 2002 American Sociological Review article, Uggen and Manza found that the released felon vote could have altered the outcome of seven senatorial races between 1978 and 2000, and the 2000 presidential election.[71] Matt Ford noted their study concluded "if the state's 827,000 disenfranchised felons had voted at the same rate as other Floridians, Democratic candidate Al Gore would have won Florida—and the presidency — by more than 80,000 votes."[72] The effect of Florida's law is such that in 2014, purportedly "[m]ore than one in ten Floridians – and nearly one in four African-American Floridians – are shut out of the polls because of felony convictions."[73]

Voting machines

Because the 2000 presidential election was so close in Florida, the United States government and state governments pushed for election reform to be prepared by the 2004 presidential election. Many of Florida's year 2000 election night problems stemmed from usability and ballot design factors with voting systems, including the potentially confusing "butterfly ballot". Many voters had difficulties with the paper-based punch card voting machines and were either unable to understand the required process for voting or unable to perform the process. This resulted in an unusual amount of overvote (voting for more candidates than is allowed) and undervotes (voting for fewer than the minimum candidates, including none at all). Many undervotes were caused by voter error, unmaintained punch card voting booths, or errors having to do merely with the characteristics of punch card ballots (resulting in hanging, dimpled, or pregnant chads).

A proposed solution to these problems was the installation of modern electronic voting machines. The United States presidential election of 2000 spurred the debate about election and voting reform, but it did not end it.

In the aftermath of the election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed to help states upgrade their election technology in the hopes of preventing similar problems in future elections. Unfortunately, the electronic voting systems that many states purchased to comply with HAVA actually caused problems in the presidential election of 2004.[74]

Exit polling and declaration of vote winners

The Voter News Service's reputation was damaged by its treatment of Florida's presidential vote in 2000. Breaking its own guidelines,[citation needed] VNS called the state as a win for Gore 12 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Although most of the state is in the Eastern Time Zone, counties in the Florida panhandle, located in the Central Time Zone, had not yet closed their polls. Discrepancies between the results of exit polls and the actual vote count caused the VNS to change its call twice, first from Gore to Bush and then to "too close to call". Due in part to this (and other polling inaccuracies)[citation needed] the VNS was disbanded in 2003.

According to Bush adviser Karl Rove, exit polls early in the afternoon on election day showed Gore winning by three percentage points, but when the networks called the state for Gore, Bush led by about 75,000 votes in raw tallies from the Florida Secretary of State.

Also, charges of media bias were leveled against the networks by Republicans. They claimed that the networks called states more quickly for Al Gore than for George W. Bush. Congress held hearings on this matter,[citation needed] and the networks claimed to have no intentional bias in their election night reporting. However, a study of the calls made on election night 2000 indicated that states carried by Gore were called more quickly than states won by Bush[citation needed]; however, notable Bush states, like New Hampshire and Florida, were very close, and close Gore states like Iowa, Oregon, New Mexico and Wisconsin were called late as well.[75]

The early call of Florida for Gore has been alleged to have cost Bush several close states, including Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin.[citation needed] In each of these states, Gore won by less than 10,000 votes, and the polls closed after the networks called Florida for Gore. Because the Florida call was widely seen as an indicator that Gore had won the election, it is possible that it depressed Republican turnout in these states during the final hours of voting, giving Gore the slim margin by which he carried each of them.[citation needed] Had Bush carried all four of these states, he would have won the electoral vote, even with a loss in Florida. Likewise, the call may have affected the outcome of the Senate election in Washington state, where incumbent Republican Slade Gorton was defeated by approximately 2,000 votes statewide.[citation needed]

Ralph Nader spoiler controversy

Many Gore supporters claimed that third-party candidate Nader acted as a spoiler in the election since Nader votes could have been cast for Gore, and for instance, Nader allegedly threw the election outcome to Bush.[76] Nader received 2.74 percent of the popular vote nationwide, getting 97,000 votes in Florida (by comparison, there were 111,251 overvotes)[77][78] and 22,000 votes in New Hampshire, where Bush beat Gore by 7,000 votes. Winning either state would have won the general election for Gore. Defenders of Nader, including Dan Perkins, argued that the margin in Florida was small enough that Democrats could blame any number of third-party candidates for the defeat, including Workers World Party candidate Monica Moorehead, who received 1,500 votes.[79] But the controversy with Nader also drained energy from the Democratic party as divisive debate went on in the months leading up to the election.

Nader's reputation was hurt by this perception, which may have hindered his goals as an activist. For example, Mother Jones wrote about the so-called "rank-and-file liberals" who saw Nader negatively after the election and pointed out that Public Citizen, the organization Nader founded in 1971, had a new fundraising problem in its own founder, citing a drop in contributions. Mother Jones also cited a Public Citizen's letter sent out to people interested in Nader's relation with the organization at that time, with the disclaimer: "Although Ralph Nader was our founder, he has not held an official position in the organization since 1980 and does not serve on the board. Public Citizen—and the other groups that Mr. Nader founded—act independently."[80]

Democratic party strategist and Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) chair Al From expressed a different view. In the January 24, 2001, issue[81] of the DLC's Blueprint magazine,[82] he wrote, "I think they're wrong on all counts. The assertion that Nader's marginal vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. When exit pollers asked voters how they would have voted in a two-way race, Bush actually won by a point. That was better than he did with Nader in the race."

In an online article published by Salon.com on Tuesday, November 28, 2000, Texan progressive activist Jim Hightower claimed that in Florida, a state Gore lost by only 537 votes, 24,000 Democrats voted for Nader, while another 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush. According to Hightower, 191,000 self-described liberals in Florida voted for Bush, while fewer than 34,000 voted for Nader. Wrote Hightower:

Even when Gore went skittering across the country in August on a widely ballyhooed "Working Families Tour", he had the Clinton administration's favorite Wall Streeter, Robert Rubin, by his side, sending a stage wink to the corporate powers, assuring them that all his [Gore's] quasi-populist posturing was only rhetoric – not to worry, Rubin still has a grip on policy.[83]

Press influence on race

In their 2007 book The Nightly News Nightmare: Network Television's Coverage of US Presidential Elections, 1988–2004, professors Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter alleged most media outlets influenced the outcome of the election through the use of horse race journalism.[84] Some liberal supporters of Al Gore argued that the media had a bias against Gore and in favor of Bush. Peter Hart and Jim Naureckas, two commentators for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), called the media "serial exaggerators" and alleged that several media outlets were constantly exaggerating criticism of Gore:[85] they alleged that the media falsely claimed Gore lied when he claimed he spoke in an overcrowded science class in Sarasota, Florida,[85] and also alleged the media gave Bush a pass on certain issues, such as Bush allegedly exaggerating how much money he signed into the annual Texas state budget to help the uninsured during his second debate with Gore in October 2000.[85] In the April 2000 issue of Washington Monthly, columnist Robert Parry also alleged that media outlets exaggerated Gore's supposed claim that he "discovered" the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York during a campaign speech in Concord, New Hampshire on November 30, 1999,[86] when he had only claimed he "found" it after it was already evacuated in 1978 because of chemical contamination.[86]Rolling Stone columnist Eric Boehlert also alleged media outlets exaggerated criticism of Gore as early as July 22, 1999,[87] when Gore, known for being an environmentalist, had a friend release 500 million gallons of water into a drought stricken river to help keep his boat afloat for a photo shoot;[87] Boehlert claimed that media outlets exaggerated the actual number of gallons that were released, as they claimed it was 4 billion.[87]

Color coding

This is the election that fixed red as a color for the Republican party and blue for the Democrats. The New York Times used these colors on their full-color election maps. Senior graphics editor Archie Tse, decided that as Republican started with an R then red "was a more natural association". Prior to that color coding choices were inconsistent across the media. In 1976, in its first election map on air, NBC used bulbs that turned red for Carter-won states (Democratic), and blue for Ford (Republican). This original color scheme was based on the British political system, where blue is used to denote the centre-right Conservative Party and red for the centre-left Labour Party (gold or yellow is used for the 'third party' Liberal Democrats). However the NBC format did not catch on long term, the media did not follow suit. The unusually long 2000 election helped to cement red and blue as colors in the collective mind.[88]

Effects on future elections and Supreme Court

A number of subsequent articles have characterized the election in 2000, and the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v Gore, as damaging the reputation of the Supreme Court, increasing the view of judges as partisan, and decreasing Americans' trust in the integrity of elections.[89][90][91][92][93][94] The number of lawsuits brought over election issues more than doubled following the 2000 election cycle, an increase Richard L. Hasen of UC Irvine School of Law attributes to the "Florida fiasco".[93]

Footnotes

↑ Electors were elected to all 538 apportioned positions; however, an elector from the District of Columbia pledged to the Gore/Lieberman ticket abstained from casting a vote for president or vice president, bringing the total number of electoral votes cast to 537.

↑ 267 electors pledged to the Gore/Lieberman ticket were elected; however, an elector from the District of Columbia abstained from casting a vote for president or vice president, bringing the ticket’s total number of electoral votes to 266.

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Vote pairing occurs when two people commit to voting in a mutually agreed upon manner. Vote swapping is a common example of vote pairing, where a voter in one district agrees to vote tactically for a less-preferred candidate or party who has a greater chance of winning in their district, in exchange for a voter from another district voting tactically for the candidate the first voter prefers, because that candidate has a greater possibility of winning in that district.

The 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, the 46th Governor of Texas, was formally launched on June 14, 1999 as Governor Bush, the eldest son of former President George H.W. Bush announced his intention to seek the Republican Party nomination for the presidency of the United States in the 2000 presidential election.

The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior U.S. Senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior Senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American ever to be elected to the presidency as well as being only the third sitting United States Senator elected president, joining Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy.

The following is a timeline of events during the 2004 U.S. presidential election:

The 2000 presidential campaign of Al Gore, the 45th Vice President of the United States under President Bill Clinton, began when he announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Carthage, Tennessee, on June 16, 1999. Gore became the Democratic nominee for the 2000 presidential election on August 17, 2000.

The 2004 United States presidential election was the 55th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Incumbent Republican President George W. Bush defeated Democratic nominee John Kerry, a United States Senator from Massachusetts. As of the 2016 election this was the last time a Republican nominee for president won the popular vote.

The 2000 United States presidential election in Florida took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the nationwide presidential election. Florida, a swing state, had a major recount dispute that took center stage in the election. The outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election was not known for more than a month after balloting because of the extended process of counting and recounting Florida's presidential ballots. State results tallied on election night gave 246 electoral votes to Republican nominee Texas Governor George W. Bush and 255 to Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore, with New Mexico (5), Oregon (7), and Florida (25) too close to call that evening. Gore won New Mexico and Oregon over the following few days, but the result in Florida would have been decisive however those two states had voted.

The 2000 presidential campaign of Ralph Nader, political activist, author, lecturer and attorney, began on February 21, 2000. He cited "a crisis of democracy" as motivation to run. He ran in the 2000 United States presidential election as the nominee of the Green Party. He was also nominated by the Vermont Progressive Party and the United Citizens Party of South Carolina. The campaign marked Nader's second presidential bid as the Green nominee, and his third overall, having run as a write-in campaign in 1992 and a passive campaign on the Green ballot line in 1996.

The 2000 United States presidential election in California took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the wider 2000 United States presidential election. Voters chose 54 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

The 2000 United States elections were held on November 7, 2000. Republican Governor George W. Bush of Texas defeated Democratic Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee in the presidential election. Republicans retained control of both houses of Congress, giving the party unified control of Congress and the presidency for the first time since the 1954 elections.

The 2008 United States presidential election in Florida took place on November 4, 2008, and was part of the 2008 United States presidential election. Voters chose 27 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

In 2000, the United States presidential election in New Jersey, along with every U.S. state and Washington, D.C., took place on November 7, 2000. It was the 54th U.S. presidential election. The major party candidates were Democratic Vice President Al Gore of the incumbent administration and Republican Governor of Texas George W. Bush, son of the 41st U.S. president, George H. W. Bush. Owing to the indirect system of voting used in U.S. presidential elections, George W. Bush narrowly defeated Gore in Electoral College votes despite that Gore earned a higher percentage of the popular vote. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, the only third-party candidate represented on most states' ballots, came in a distant third.

The 2000 United States presidential election in Connecticut took place on November 7, 2000, and was part of the 2000 United States presidential election. Voters chose 8 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

The 2000 United States presidential election in New Hampshire took place on Election Day on November 7, 2000 as part of the 2000 United States presidential election. The 2 major candidates were Texas Governor George W. Bush of the Republican Party and sitting Vice President Al Gore of the Democratic Party. When all votes were tallied, Bush was declared the winner with a plurality of the vote over Gore, receiving 48% of the vote to Gore's 47%, while Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received almost 4% of the vote in the state. Bush went on to win the election nationwide. As of the 2016 presidential election, this is the last time that the Republican nominee carried New Hampshire. It also marked the last time that a Republican won any electoral votes in New England, until Donald Trump won Maine's 2nd congressional district in 2016.

The 2000 United States presidential election in Minnesota took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the 2000 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all 50 states and D.C. Voters chose ten representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

The 2000 United States presidential election in New Mexico took place on November 7, 2000, and was part of the 2000 United States presidential election. Voters chose five electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. New Mexico was won by Vice President Al Gore by a 0.06 percent margin. It was the closest state in the entire presidential election, closer than Florida. News outlets called New Mexico for Gore at approximately 10:21 p.m. (EST), but later retracted the call when it was determined to be too close to call.

There have been five United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote including the 1824 election, which was the first U.S. presidential election where the popular vote was recorded. Losing the popular vote means securing less of the national popular vote than the person who received either a majority or a plurality of the vote.

↑ "Trump officially joins Reform Party". CNN. October 25, 1999. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved August 25, 2015. Trump has not yet formally declared he would seek the Reform Party nomination, but he announced Sunday he was quitting the Republican Party

Moore, David W. (2006). How to Steal an Election: The Inside Story of How George Bush's Brother and FOX Network Miscalled the 2000 Election and Changed the Course of History. New York: Nation Press. ISBN1-56025-929-9.